


Shelter (See Me Through)

by ManukaHoney



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate universe in which Billy gets the help he deserved all along, And a family to go with it, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Childhood Trauma, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Neil Hargrove is His Own Warning, Protective Jim "Chief" Hopper, Recovery, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:02:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23668837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManukaHoney/pseuds/ManukaHoney
Summary: In which Jim Hopper fights for Billy, Steve Harrington loves his boyfriend, and Billy Hargrove teaches everyone about strength.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 55
Kudos: 274





	1. Things we know

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at gypsymishka =)  
> I wrote the outline of this story after watching the short films 'Removed' and 'Remembering Trauma,' both reminding me in parts of Billy Hargrove.  
> Title taken partially from 'Crawl' by Superchick, and partially from a poem I love called 'Shelter meaning other people.'  
> I really appreciate comments! If you like this or hate it, let me know! :)

Hopper had worked alongside Child Protective Services before; It was a necessary part of his job. In areas like Hawkins, he never usually had to, the close-knit nature of small towns seemingly giving him the roles of social worker, counsellor, and occasional Justice of the peace as part of his regular job.  
It meant long hours and late-night radio calls to El when he wanted to try and make her eat something other than Eggos despite still being on shift, but it also meant he wasn’t weighed down by the procedures and paperwork that police departments in cities were.  
He also liked to think it meant the people in Hawkins trusted him.

Before he moved to Hawkins, the rare times he had to work with CPS social workers were enough for him to know that he could never stomach the daily nature of their jobs.  
He’d once testified in a child abuse case involving a twelve-year-old girl named Zoe, and there weren’t many things in the world as haunting as sitting in a witness stand, describing the nature of her injuries for a jury. Even after moving to Hawkins and encountering demodogs, he still held to this stance.  
There had been few things in his life more jarring than the dead, hollow look in the girls eyes as she sat near the back of the court room with her new foster mother, listening to Hopper recount the marred state she’d been carried into an ambulance in nearly three months before the trial.  
At one point, from his position in the bench, he’d caught site of her rolling her eyes in the direction of the jury as they stared with growing expressions of horror at Chief Jim Hopper in his police uniform. It made sense. Their pity hadn’t helped her for the twelve years she’d lived with the man on trial before she’d been carried out in an ambulance. There weren’t enough district attorneys or jail cells in the world to make that kind of thing okay in hindsight.

He never thought he’d see anything close to that case in Hawkins.

There weren’t a lot of drugs other than marijuana that were found commonplace in his town, and for the most part everyone was too involved in each other’s business for anyone to risk stepping too far over the line of moral deviance.  
El had shattered his line of reasoning, reminding him so much of that little girl when he first met her that it hurt.  
Billy Hargrove was his next lesson in brutality.

It hadn’t taken him long to hear about the wild, unstable teenager from California and his family.  
Hopper had met Max for the first time when she was hanging out with El, and he admired the way she seemed fiery enough to hold her own with the boys while being friendly and patient enough to never make El feel odd.  
Max was a good kid, he decided.  
It was only hours after the two girls had eaten freezer waffles on his living room couch that Hopper was first called to the Hargrove-Mayfield home at the request of a neighbour reporting a domestic dispute nearing midnight.  
He’d knocked on the door harder than he probably had to- He could hear the man’s voice before he’d even stepped out of the police car, and he felt sick at the thought of anyone being on the receiving end of that. He’d almost jogged over to the front door, and when he was halfway up the driveway, the sound of a heavy crash thundered through the wood of the house and a startled cry, scared and high pitched enough that for a second he’d thought of Max, nearly had him drawing his gun.

So he’d knocked, hard and demanding, prepared to kick the door of the house in if he was ignored.  
The man who opened the door was slightly smaller than Hopper, though still larger than average, with hard eyes. His chest was rising and falling just fast enough for Hopper to notice, as if the man was slightly out of breath and trying to hide it.  
Leant against a door frame toward the back of the house, Hopper could just make out the shape of a teenage boy, who he concluded was probably Billy Hargrove, standing hunched over with most of his weight seemingly taken by the wall that steadied him.  
The man noticed Hopper looking over his shoulder into the house and shifted his weight, blocking Billy from sight almost completely.

If things were different, it would have been an open and shut case of child abuse, and the Hargrove kid and his fiery little sister- step-sister, he’d remind himself later, knowing children could get particular about that kind of thing, would have spent at least that night in his cabin before they figured out what to do going forward in the morning.  
Things weren’t different though, and after both Hargrove men had assured him that everything was fine, that Billy had come home beaten up from a fight he’d picked of his own accord and that Max was safely asleep in her room, he’d been forced to return to his cabin, feeling sick and furious.

............................

Hopper met Billy properly a week later. He’d seen a teenager smoking alone on a playground in the middle of the night and pulled in before he even realised who it was, concerned about the kid’s safety.  
Hopper could feel the stinging chill of the night air against his face as he climbed out of his car, and he’d felt his concern grow sevenfold when he was able to tell the kid wasn’t wearing a shirt.

He shut his car door loud enough to be heard from where the kid was slouched against the playground equipment, illuminated slightly under a street light. He wasn’t looking to sneak up on the kid and scare him, but the way the kid jumped when he heard the door slam made Hopper think he was probably spooked before he got there anyway.  
He approached him slowly, noticing the way the blonde haired boy stubbed out his cigarette on a piece of jutting metal and tensed as if ready to run away.  
He spoke from a farther distance than what felt natural.

‘You doing okay over there, kid?’  
No response.  
‘It’s freezing out here and you don’t seem dressed for the occasion.’

As he’d walked closer, he realised it was Hargrove, the same boy he’d seen waiting for Max in his car whenever he’d come to pick her up.  
It was enough to make him worried.  
He could see old-looking bruises across the kid’s right side, and newer markings on his neck.  
He stared at them for a beat, and realised they were hickeys, though they looked too harsh and angry against his skin.  
Billy looked exhausted.  
Even though he waited for Max from his car, steadfastly refusing Hopper’s open invitation to come wait for her inside the cabin, he’d always been in motion.  
Hopper had seen him chain smoke and adjust his music and move his head to the beat of whatever song he was playing for almost an hour at a time.  
Now he was just still.  
‘I’m fine, Chief,’ Hargrove said, ‘Just taking a breather.’

Hopper had nodded, as though it were a normal, logical thing to ’take a breather’ on a playground in the middle of the night, shirtless and freezing and covered in hickeys.  
‘I get that,’ he conceded, ‘Anything in particular you’re taking a breather from?’  
He’d been walking closer, slowly, before he drew his eyes up from the damage done to the boy’s body to look at his facial expression and paused.  
The kid’s eyes were hard and locked right on Hopper’s movements while his fingers had latched onto a metal bar next to him tightly enough that his knuckles were white. It looked like he was fighting to conceal panic and not doing a good enough job of it, his eyes remaining wide and hypervigilant, tracing his figure in front of him as he spoke.  
‘Just Hawkins. It’s a shit town.’ His eyes darted around, looking for an escape, even as Hopper stilled in his path. He started shifting, agitated. ‘I was already going home, Chief, it’s fine, um-‘

Hargrove stepped off the platform he’d been sitting on and looked toward the same carpark Hopper had parked his car in, the same blue Camaro he’d watched Max climb into waiting expectantly for Billy. Hargrove was getting twitchy, and it looked like he was literally calculating how he could get to his car while simultaneously keeping as much distance from Hopper as possible.

Hopper scrambled for words that would help the situation.

’This isn’t like California, Billy, if someone at home is hurting you, I can-‘  
’No one’s hurting me, Chief,’ He cut in, voice suddenly hard and desperate in a way that made him look so fucking young and scared.  
‘How did you get those bruises, Billy?’  
The boy froze in place for a second and seemed to become aware of how on-display he was.

He swallowed visibly, and then grinned.  
It was strained, at best.  
‘Rough sex.’ A defiant stare, a tight attempt at a smirk on his face, ‘You know how it is.’  
Hopper willed himself not to become frustrated.  
’Not those ones, Hargrove…'  
‘I fell down the stairs.’  
The statement was flat, spoken almost like a dare.  
Hargrove knew that Hopper knew he was full of shit.

Billy, apparently, decided that he’d had enough. He walked past Jim, toward his Camaro, keeping a wide distance between the two men. Hopper could make out fresh scratches on his back as he walked away from him, dropping his crushed cigarette in the grass on his way.  
Hopper had just watched.  
Adopting El had taught him a lot about looking after kids who had been through the ringer, and he’d been forced to accept the humbling truth that whether you were dealing with a thirteen year old girl or anyone else, you could never really force someone to do anything they didn’t want to do.  
There were a lot of ways he could have taken back control of the situation and all of them would probably have scared Billy, so he let him go.

…………………………..

When Steve Harrington had adopted the role of babysitter and chauffeur to El’s group of friends, he was quietly amazed. He’d once seen Steve throwing up in the middle of a street, two blocks away from a party held at his own house while two of his friends held him upright and laughed about it.  
It was an improvement, and it was heart-warming to see a kid trying to become better, even if it had taken a brush with the Upside Down to bring it on.  
He was even more amazed when, after hearing of nothing but animosity between Steve Harrington and Billy Hargrove, he started seeing them around Hawkins together. At first, their friendship seemed tentative at best, but somewhere along the line, Hopper became used to seeing Billy in the cabin whenever Steve was there with the kids and seeing them move out onto the front porch to smoke together while the kids got progressively rowdier.

He asked Max about it one evening, when she was curled up next to El on their couch after the boys had all gone home.  
‘Your step-brother and Harrington seem pretty close now,’ He started, trying not to make it sound like a question.  
Max wrinkled her nose slightly when she replied, like she was just as perplexed as Hopper.  
‘Yeah. Billy beat him up the night we went into the tunnels and a few weeks later I saw them smoking together in Billy’s car when I came out of the arcade. Guys are weird.’

Hopper had to laugh at that.  
‘Yeah, kid. I can’t argue with you there… Is Billy usually violent?’  
He couldn’t help adding the last bit. He’d seen a softer side of Billy, or maybe just a slightly less prickly side to the kid, since seeing him around the cabin with Steve and Max.  
It wasn’t lost on him that although he called Max ’Shit-bird’ more often than her actual name and yelled at her to hurry up when she was literally ahead of Billy on their way to the Camaro, he still gave her rides everywhere.

He’d seen Billy glare at Lucas Sinclair so venomously it was unnerving when he got too close to Max, and he’d been ready to ask Max if her brother was racist, just to be cautious, when he realised that Billy glared at every boy who came near Max that way. Hopper was pretty sure he wore the same expression every time Mike even talked to El, so he could empathise with Billy there.  
Still, he had to ask the question.

’Nah,’ Max grinned at his question, ‘Steve actually punched him first.’  
Hopper, who had been taking a sip of beer as she spoke, nearly choked upon hearing that, and spluttered for a second as Max giggled.  
‘You’re kidding, Steve Harrington hit Billy first?’  
‘Yeah, but he gets all defensive if we bring it up. He’s still embarrassed.’  
Hopper grinned.  
He thought for a second, and decided to tell Max something he probably wasn’t supposed to.

His words were serious, but he tried to speak evenly and casually enough that he wouldn’t intimidate her.  
‘Max, I want you to know that if you or Billy ever need help, or if Billy needs help and he’s scared to ask for it, you can always come to me, okay? Any time.’  
Max stared at him; her facial expression unreadable for long enough that Hopper wondered briefly if she was giving him the silent treatment.  
Then, a quiet voice that sounded like a confession rang through the living room.  
‘He used to get help, back in California,’ she said, looking intently at a piece of thread that had come loose or the sleeve of her sweater.  
Hopper nodded like he understood, as he tried to figure out what she meant.  
‘He um, had this social worker he was close to, and she used to do anger management and stuff with him and a few other kids like him who had been in foster care from his old school.’  
That got his attention.  
‘Billy was in foster care?’  
Max shrugged and avoided eye contact.  
’Only a few times. Never for long. He was way calmer when he did all that counselling stuff, but Hawkins doesn’t really have anything like that.’  
Hopper nodded, promising Max he would watch out for Billy, before leaving the girls alone for a while to process the conversation.

Max began to stay the night in El’s room whenever her mom let her and she didn’t say anything more about her family after that conversation on his couch, so Hopper didn’t push. He wanted his cabin to be a refuge from whatever was going on at home, rather than a place of interrogation, and as long as Max never seemed to have any unexplained injuries, he wouldn’t force the topic.

……………………

When the Hawkins Police Station received a call from Billy’s old social worker from California, and a carefully controlled but recognisably anxious voice had told Hopper of how suddenly the Californian family had left without word, and exactly why that was so concerning, Hopper wanted to punch something.  
Preferably Neil Hargrove.  
The woman, Steff, had sounded worried when the Chief of Police immediately knew who she was talking about when she said the name William Hargrove.  
The relief and surprise in her voice when he assured her that Billy was a good kid, that he knew him because of his little step-sister Max and not from nights spent wrangling him into lockup, was palpable.  
She seemed to care about the kid.  
Hopper wanted to inflict the kind of violence on Neil Hargrove that only El could bring down on him when he hung up the phone.  
He also wanted to hug El extra hard when he got home from work and let her eat all of the Eggos in the world, before figuring out what to do with the information he’d just been given, because there was no way he could ignore this anymore.

……………………

He talked to Steve first. Hopper had grown to respect Harrington; Once, he’d been late home by several hours and with his radio completely out of batteries, he’d had no way of contacting El to tell her that he was okay.  
He’d floored it home in his police vehicle with sirens blaring, just to make as many people move out of his way on the roads as possible, imagining El sitting at home scared that she’d been abandoned.  
Logically, he knew El wasn’t really that kind of kid, but he was that kind of dad, so he broke several minor traffic laws on his way back to the cabin  
When he got home, he found Harrington reading to her on the living room couch while she sat sleepily at his side.  
Apparently, he’d dropped her home at the cabin after she’d been hanging out with the Party, and when she’d noted that he hadn’t been home an hour after he usually pulled up in the driveway, the Harrington kid had stayed with her until he got home.

That earned him Hopper’s trust enough for him to break all confidentiality policies and talk to Steve about what he’d heard.

‘I’m telling you this because I trust you kid, and because I know you and Hargrove are friends,’ He’d started, having seen the two boys smoking together around Hawkins and playing basketball on the public court, next to the park at night, enough times to know they were close.  
Harrington nodded, already looking concerned, and instead of trying to explain what he’d barely been able to stomach listening to from Billy’s social worker, Hopper had simply handed over the stack of papers that the California CPS office had faxed to him that afternoon.

They were papers CPS had been left with when Hargrove had disappeared from the state practically overnight, without anyone knowing where he’d gone.  
Harrington read through the file with a gradual expression of horror forming on his face.  
Hopper could empathise.  
There had been several investigations against Neil Hargrove that led nowhere when neither he nor Billy refused to cooperate.  
There were records of foster placements Billy had stayed in whenever he was removed from his dad’s house, only for him to be returned within weeks.  
There was a copy of a 505 independent learning plan he’d apparently had in place at his last school, with a note of ’Suspected Complex Trauma’ listed as a reason for the adjustments.

A therapist that worked with children of the state had included in her report terms like ‘ _Long-term suspected physical abuse_ ,’ ’ _Trauma behaviours evident_ ’ and, possibly the most horrifying, ‘ _Confirmed history of sexual abuse; Committed by adult outside of the home_.’

Harrington took a while to read it, at one point letting out an involuntary, distressed sort of noise that Hopper pretended not to hear, instead, wordlessly offering him a cigarette, which the kid declined.

When Harrington was finished, Hopper looked at him.

‘Did you know about any of this, kid?’ Harrington flinched and Hopper winced, not having meant to come across accusingly as it had.  
The teenager shook his head, paused for a second, and then bit his lip.  
‘He has bruises a lot of the time, and he hates talking about his family…’ He trailed off.  
Hopper waited him out.  
‘He gets angry if I bring it up. I thought something was going on,’ the kid was getting aggravated now, running a hand through his hair and pulling slightly at the roots as he spoke.

‘I didn’t…. He sleeps at my house when he doesn’t want to go home. I tried telling him to talk to you about it, but he’s scared of…'  
‘Cops,’ Hopper filled in when it looked like he wasn’t going to elaborate.

Harrington shook his head and spoke, ‘Men in general, I think. If I knew it was that bad, I don’t know, I would have dragged him out of his house kicking and screaming.'  
‘Harrington.’ He needed the kid focussed completely on him for what he was about to say.  
Steve looked at him.  
‘We’re getting Billy out of that house. And that thing about him kicking and screaming might just be how it happens. That’s why I want you to come with me when I get him.’  
Steve thought for a second, nodding slowly.  
He bit his lip.  
‘Max is with her mom in Indianapolis. They’re visiting her grandma. It should just be Billy and his dad in the house til next week.’  
Hopper nodded.  
‘I wouldn’t want Max being there for this.’  
Steve looked more determined now, the reality of the situation sinking in.  
Hopper clapped a hand on his shoulder.  
‘We’ll get him out tonight.’

……………….

Hopper had parked several houses down from the Hargrove-Mayfield property, Steve sitting tensed and alert in the passenger seat next to him.  
‘Let me go in first, Chief, I can get Billy ready-‘  
‘Kid, nothing you say is going to get Billy ready for this,’ Hopper growled back at him.  
‘But if he’s going to be freaking out, isn’t it better that he’s got his stuff packed up so he doesn’t have to-‘  
‘And what if Neil Hargrove walks in on you helping Billy shove his clothes into garbage bags-‘  
‘I can be quiet! I’ll go in through his window and keep-‘  
‘I’m not worried about you being quiet, kid.’  
Hopper took a deep breath, pushing his frustrations down. He couldn’t afford to do this angry. The truth is, he wanted to give Steve the go-ahead to climb through Billy’s window and tell him what was happening, help him pack some of his stuff up so he wasn’t clamouring for it at the last minute. He wanted someone to be in there keeping him calm while Hopper talked to Neil.

‘I’m not worried about you being quiet,’ he repeated, softer now, ‘I’m worried about Billy blowing up and making noise.’  
Steve paused, next to him. ‘I probably should have thought of that,’ he said quietly.  
Hopper huffed a short, unamused laugh.  
’Not your fault you’ve never removed a kid from a violent household before,’ he said wryly.

Hopper knocked on the front door, announcing himself as Hawkins’ Chief of Police loudly while Steve stood a step behind him at Hopper’s instruction. The Camaro was parked out the front of the house.  
When Neil opened the door, Hopper was hit with the smell of alcohol instantly. Neil Hargrove was significantly taller than Steve, who was an inch taller than Billy, but Hop towered over him. The man didn’t move from the doorway, blocking their path into the house and leering at Steve.  
‘Is something wrong Chief?’ He took in Hopper’s uniform. ‘My son being charged with something?’ He didn’t sound concerned. He sounded drunk, more than anything else, but also threatening.  
Hopper bristled.  
‘Billy hasn’t done anything, Hargrove. He’s a great kid, in fact. Do you mind if I come in for a talk?’  
Neil looked like he was about to shut the door in their faces and Hopper inched his foot forward just slightly, willing to muscle his way into the house if that’s what it took.  
‘We can do this in front of your neighbours out here if that’s what you prefer.’

When they were standing in the living room, Hopper addressed Steve without taking his eyes off Neil.  
’Steve, go talk to Billy.’  
Steve took his cue and left, his footsteps echoing down the corridor as Hopper turned his attention back to the man in front of him.

‘You know, I’ve gotten to know Billy since your family came to Hawkins. He reminds me of another kid I know, actually, this really tough little girl that had a rough time in her early life.’  
‘I thought you weren’t here about Billy.’  
‘I’m not here because of anything Billy’s done. I’m here because of something you’ve done.’

Hopper was about to continue, ready to make the man sweat for a while, maybe give Steve some time to get Billy together, when he remembered what he’d said to Steve in the car.  
Billy wasn’t a quiet kid.  
There were no indignant, angry noises coming from the corridor Steve had turned down, or even muffled voices.  
As if his realisation had set off a trigger, Hopper suddenly heard Steve calling out for him from the back of the house, voice high and slightly frantic.  
‘Chief? You need to come here.’

There was a beat where Neil tensed, staring straight at him, and Hopper had seen that look in men’s eyes before.  
Neil had barely started to lunge for him when Hopper landed a punch right to his chin- not quite as satisfying as a broken nose would have felt, but a reliable target to send someone to the ground unconscious.  
He heard the muffled sound of a body hitting carpeted floor as he made a beeline for Steve’s voice.

Steve wasn’t helping Billy shove clothes into a duffle bag.

He was cradling Billy’s body on the floor, and Hopper felt like he’d been punched in the stomach when he took in the sight.  
Billy seemed semi-conscious, his head lolling slightly in Steve’s hands. Steve’s eyes were blown wide and scared as he carded blonde curls out of Billy’s eyes with his fingers, Billy sort of slumping forward against Steve’s chest.  
He was wearing just a pair of sweatpants, and his whole torso was covered in horrifying shades of green and purple bruising that climbed up his body. One side of his face seemed to have been hit with something hard enough to bruise over almost completely. His throat was horrifying.  
He was covered in blood-none of it new, Hopper noted with growing fury toward the unconscious man in the living room; it was dry, crusted over his body thickly and flaked though his hair.

Hopper took a step toward the two boys slowly, but Billy flinched, apparently only just noticing Hopper, which was worrying it itself.  
Steve was talking to him, whispering in his ear, and Hopper crouched down to get eye-level with Billy, hoping he would appear less intimidating if he wasn’t towering over the kid, but Billy refused to look at him.

‘Billy, it’s going to be okay,’ he said, speaking low and as soothingly as he could.  
‘I know you’re hurt, and overwhelmed, but Steve and I are going to get you somewhere safe.’  
Billy closed his eyes, and for a second Hopper was convinced he’d passed out, but then his hands reach out to grab at Steve’s shirt in front of him.  
His fingers are shaking, badly, and they fumble slightly before successfully bunching some of the material up in his fists and clinging.  
Hopper wants to walk out of the room and empty an entire magazine into Neil Hargrove.  
Steve’s voice is softer than anything Hopper’s ever heard come out of the kid’s mouth before, including the time he’d heard him reading bedtime stories to El on his couch.  
‘I’m here, Billy. We’ve got you.’  
Fingers continue stroking through blond hair as he talks, ‘How long you been lying here for?’  
Fuck. This was bad.  
Billy opened his mouth and closed it again a few times, soundlessly. Hopper realised that he was trying, for Steve, to communicate.  
‘Y’sterday.’  
It’s quiet, and slurred, but he was responding.  
It was also horrifying. The sun was going down outside Billy’s bedroom window and the kid had apparently been lying in his own blood since yesterday.  
‘Billy, do you think you have a head injury, or are you foggy because you’re overwhelmed and exhausted at the moment?’ Hopper had to know.  
He knew he should probably take the kid to the ER, but he didn’t want to traumatise him further if he didn’t have to.  
Billy finally stared at him briefly; Looked like he was trying to answer and not quite getting the words past his lips.  
Steve looked at Hopper. ‘I think he’s just overwhelmed. He’s gotten quiet like this before.’  
Hopper filed that information away for later.  
‘I’m going to pack some of his stuff up for him. Do you want to just… keep doing what you’re doing?’  
Steve nodded, raking his nails softly up and down Billy’s left arm gently, looking like Hopper couldn’t pry Billy away from him if he got in between them with a crowbar.

Hopper looked around the room for a duffle bag and started filling one with clothes, trying to be careful, unsure of how much Billy was aware of at that point. He couldn’t help but smile slightly at the hair products and extensive variety of cologne on the kid’s dresser. There was more jewellery than he would have expected, and under Steve’s quiet direction, he added a wooden box from a shelf and as many of his music records as possible.  
When he emptied Billy’s top drawer of socks and boxers, he found a box of condoms and a half empty bottle of lube shoved toward the back, which he deliberately didn’t think about as he moved them into the bag.  
At least the kid was being safe.

It took a lot of coaxing to get Billy to the car.  
He could barely talk, let alone stand, and he didn’t seem enthusiastic to have Hopper even touch him.  
Steve half-carried him to the car, only for Billy to slump into his chest and for Steve to wrap his arms around him the second they were both settled in the backseat.  
Hopper figured it wasn’t the time to enforce seatbelts and let them cling until they were back at the cabin.

It was only when they walked through the front door of the cabin that Hopper realised, he should probably have talked to El before rescuing an abused teenage boy and bringing him back home. She came out of her room, looking at Steve and Billy worriedly when she caught sight of them.  
Steve noticed her and managed to give her a weak smile.  
‘I’m going to get him cleaned up,’ he told Hopper, angling toward the bathroom door, Billy still in his arms.  
‘Do you need any help?’  
Steve shook his head.  
‘I think even like this, he’d fight you tooth and nail if you tried to take his clothes off.’  
Hopper almost asked him if he was sure the same thing wouldn’t happen to Steve when he tried, then remembered the way he’d seen Billy cuddled into him in the back of his car on the drive over and thought better of it.  
He could think about the boy’s dynamic when Billy wasn’t being physically held up by Steve Harrington.


	2. Visceral Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy was backing away, shaking his head slowly at Hopper like he didn’t have any idea how to navigate this.  
> Hopper could relate to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Billy isn't having an easy time at the moment, but he'll get there!  
> I hope you enjoy this chapter, I really enjoyed writing it, but I was nervous to post it.  
> If you like it, or hate it, or you want to shout at me about Billy and Steve (I love hearing about these boys), come talk to me about it =) Your comments on the first chapter made me ridiculously happy.  
> Also, I read a post on Tumblr today about Billy having a teddy bear that he finds comfort in whilst recovering from Starcourt, and I just want everyone to know that it was the most adorable thing I've read.

The first days after Billy moved in were startlingly easy.  
Hopper watched him move around the cabin quietly, spending most of his time in the room he’d been carried into just several nights before, leaving for school before Hopper had even woken up.  
He didn’t ask questions, didn’t panic when he woke up injured in a strange place with a police officer in his room, didn’t yell or punch anything or respond in any other way Hopper could have understood.  
He wondered if he should be grateful for the unexpected passivity.

When he had first taken in El, he had borrowed a book from the Hawkins’ public library on trauma responses in children- inconspicuously wedging it in between a stack of true crime novels and ignoring the strange look he’d received from the librarian working the front desk when she’d scanned the barcode on the front of the book.  
It hadn’t been able to help him understand the intricacies and grey-areas that came with looking after a child who could shatter windows just by being in a state of distress, standing completely stationary. It had, however, outlined enough behavioural reactions commonly found in abused children to make his head spin.  
He’d mentally prepared himself for all of them; _Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance_ was a mantra that was repeated over and over again when he was in the army, and he wasn’t sure if raising a teenager was more or less difficult to navigate than basic training had been to complete, but it was the only frame of reference he felt qualified to use.  
If one lesson from his military years had stayed with him, it had been the importance of preparing for the worst, while hoping for the best.

All those times stood shoulder-to-shoulder with members of his unit, wearing identical fatigues layered under heavy body armour as they clung to their their service rifles in anticipation of a task that they were never called to undertake was still infuriating to think about. However, those times of anticlimactic preparation also meant that once, when an explosive device had detonated under the tank of a specialist assault team thirty minutes before they were supposed to complete an assignment in the Middle East, his own team had been able to step in, receiving rapid-fire briefings as they conducted weapon checks at the very last minute.

It was always better to be over-prepared than caught off guard.

  
So, he’d braced himself for every dot-point he’d read, from violent rages through to chronic bedwetting.  
For the most part, El turned out to be far easier to raise than he had thought, and aside from a handful of psychic tantrums, occasional nightmares and a moderately severe case of claustrophobia, she had adapted to life in the cabin with a subtle, remarkable degree of resilience.

The night Billy arrived at the cabin, shell-shocked and silent as he was almost manhandled into his bathroom by Steve Harrington, Hopper had dug the book out of the shelf he had buried it in almost a year ago, wincing as he remembered, only after finding it, that he had never actually gotten around to taking it back.  
He’d skimmed the introductory chapter while Steve, he guessed, helped Billy shower.

El hadn’t struggled to assimilate into her new life the way Hopper had worried she might, but she was younger when he met her; More flexible and not even half as volatile as the teenager in his shower was known to be.  
There were no startled, indignant cries from the bathroom, and he didn’t hear any demands to ‘ _Keep your fuckin’ hands off me, Harrington_ ,’ which was a relief, though he did hear a sharp, rattling thud at one point, alongside an inhale sharp enough to be caught through the thin walls of the cabin.  
There wasn’t even a beat of silence for Hopper’s concern to grow in before he could hear Steve’s whispered ‘ _Fuck_ , easy Billy…Just…lean against me if you need, not the glass, okay?’  
There weren’t any more alarming noises after that, and Hopper wandered out into the main living space to try and catch a glimpse of the boys as they came out, wanting to try and see if there was any more damage to Billy’s body that they hadn’t noticed under the blood as they half-dragged, half-carried him inside earlier.  
El had gone to bed once she’d verified that he was home, and although he was pretty sure her insistence of waiting up for him wasn’t all that healthy for her sleep patterns, he was always touched.  
When the two boys emerged from the bathroom, Steve had a towel wrapped tightly around his waist, his hair dripping onto the floor around him which surprised Hopper momentarily, having assumed Steve was clothed and trying to help Billy stand awkwardly from outside the shower.

Billy’s towel was loosely pulled around his hips; Steve using one hand to wrap around Billy’s shoulder and pin him to his own, steadier frame, his other hand gripping at the towel bunched around Billy’s left hip and just barely holding it together as Billy’s own hands dangled uselessly at his sides.  
He glanced toward El’s door, glad she was sleeping, or on her radio to her friends pretending to sleep, just not wandering around the living room, because he was seeing more of Billy’s body he wanted to, and the towel looked dangerously close to slipping even further and exposing him completely. Billy’s eyes were glazed and they didn’t even flicker his way as the two moved past him, Steve locking worried eyes with Hopper briefly, before shuffling forward into the room set aside for Billy and nudging the door closed with his foot.

It was almost an hour before Steve emerged from the bedroom, pulling the door shut behind him over a ten-second period, determined to not make any noise.  
It was a sweet enough gesture that Hopper didn’t feel the need to tell him that it was one of the only doors in the cabin that didn’t squeak when it was opened or closed.  
Steve wandered slightly from the door, took several deep, deliberate inhales of oxygen, and moved to stand with his weight pressed back against one of the living room walls, his hands raised above him and settled on his head like he was getting his breath back after a basketball game.  
He looked exhausted.

‘You okay, kid?’  
Steve looked at him like he’d suggested adopting a demodog as a therapy pet.  
‘Yeah Chief, I’m not the one who just got carried out of a house.’  
Hopper stared at him, evenly, crossing his arms over his chest when next spoke.  
‘Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a rough thing for you to be part of.'  
Steve looked away from him.  
‘Are you staying here tonight? He’ll probably want to wake up with someone he trusts around.’  
Steve looked pained for a second, and he shook his head.  
‘I can’t,’ he said, the strain in his voice telling Hopper just how much he probably hated the fact.  
‘My parents are actually home for once. They’re gone again in a couple days, I don’t even know what country. But if I’m not there in the morning, they’ll be pissed.’

Hopper had suspected on more than one occasion that Steve liked hanging around the cabin far more than he would admit to aloud. He had never been to Steve’s place, but he’d picked up from conversations with the kids that it was really big, and always empty.

It was the kind of living situation that was great in theory, but probably far less desirable than it sounded in practice.

‘I’ll call you if anything happens, but he’ll be okay here, Steve. I promise.’  
Steve looked like he wanted to do nothing less than leave Billy alone in an unfamiliar place for the night, but eventually nodded.  
‘Don't-’ Steve cut himself off, licking his lips and flickering his eyes away from Hopper once again before continuing.  
'I mean, don’t touch him if he panics, or anything. Tomorrow. Or after that, even. It doesn’t go well.’  
Hopper nodded, trying to figure out a way to make the kid in front of him more comfortable with leaving Billy there.  
‘Billy isn’t the first traumatised kid that’s moved in here, Steve.’  
‘Yeah, but he’s the first that’s probably not going to be won over with Eggos.’  
He had a point there, but Hopper wasn’t going to concede to it.

Steve went home soon after, and despite being on the very brink of exhaustion, Hopper determinedly started to make his way through the main parts of his stolen library book.

He had a feeling it would be more helpful now than it had been upon the arrival of El a year earlier, and every time he came across a section that reminded him of Billy, he folded a corner of the page down, carefully.

………………………

Hopper had learned years before moving to Hawkins exactly how loud silence could be, whether the expression was cliched or not. He’d learned it when Sara had died, in the time he and Diane had spent with her in the hospital room they’d become far too familiar with after she was already gone, before her body was taken away by nurses.  
There hadn’t been any words they could share in that moment, already processing their grief separately in the same room.

He’d learned it again in the weeks, months afterward, when Diane and him both moved out of the home they’d shared and when sympathy cards started slowing just as the shock had started wearing off, giving way to the reality of Sara's absence.  
Hopper knew that trauma often walked quietly, and Billy’s silence in those few days after he moved in spoke volumes.  
He didn’t just refuse to say more than the bare minimum number of words to him or El.  
He also refused to unpack anything from the duffle bag Steve had set down in the corner of his room that first night; Hopper had heard him rummaging around in it just to find clothes and school equipment, but when Hopper had told him that it might be easier if he put some of his clothes in the drawers, Billy had just shrugged.

He knew Billy had talked to Max, had asked El if he could borrow her walkie talkie and shut himself in his room with it when he was fairly sure Max was back in Hawkins with her mom.  
He’d only caught glimpses of the conversation through the walls, had heard Billy say, ‘Hopper and Steve came and got me…. Yeah, like California, but without Steff… I don’t know, Shitbird, I’ll ask him… Yeah, you too Max.’

The penny finally dropped the following day.

Billy had been agitated since he got home from school, and Hopper knew from the phone call he’d received at the station several hours earlier that it had started before that.  
One of the first things he had done after speaking to Billy’s social worker from California, even before removing Billy from his home, was changing the contact information from Neil Hargrove’s to his own on the Hawkins High School system.  
He’d been prepared to contact Steff, if that was what it came to, and had brought a heavily edited version of Billy’s social services file, with just enough information inside to support his assumption of guardianship, to the school’s front office.

The receptionist, a middle-aged woman Hopper had seen several times around Hawkins, had agreed to change the information so easily that he’d found himself wondering exactly what impression Neil Hargrove had left when he enrolled his son in the school just several months earlier.  
Upon his surprised expression that he hadn’t been able to mask in the moment of relief, she’d looked at him intently and told him in a grim, wiry tone, ‘I fostered my daughter for three years before they let me adopt her, and they forced the kid into visitations with her biological mom for nearly two of them. I know these things can be complicated.’

Hopper knew Billy had been agitated when he got a call from Billy’s basketball coach less than ten minutes after his practice ended.  
The man called him at the station; Hopper had been doing paperwork at his desk when he picked up the call.  
‘Hawkins Police Department, how can I help you?'  
‘Afternoon, Chief. My name is Mr Weiss, I’m calling from Hawkins High School.’  
Alarm bells had gone off in his head and immediately, possibilities of Billy experiencing a PTSD episode on the basketball court, or Neil Hargrove storming into the gym at a time he knew his son would be there, and a multitude of other, equally horrifying scenarios came to mind, and he had to force down the urge to grab for his car keys long enough to form a response.  
‘What’s going on? Is Billy okay?’  
‘Billy’s safe, Chief. Nothing’s happened like you’re thinking.’  
He relaxed slightly, but still eyed his car from where he could see it through the window, parked stationary under a tree. ‘Billy’s safe’ was a really specific choice words, and it wasn’t the same as ‘Billy’s fine.’  
Mr Weiss carried on, his voice friendly and conversational.  
‘I was surprised to hear you’d taken him in. When I asked him if he was doing okay, the way he was playing shirtless and covered in bruises and all, he just rolled his eyes and immediately went back to playing a really touchy game of one-on-one with Harrington on the court.'  
Hopper winced at that.  
Mr Weiss just kept going.  
‘I like Hargrove. And I know a kid who’s been through the ringer when I see one. I once demonstrated a defensive position on the kid for a partner drill and he flinched so hard when I put my hands up in front of him that he almost lost control of the ball. Kid didn’t look me in the eye for a week.’  
The man blew out a sigh.

‘He was riled up today. Nearly socked a kid in the jaw when they ran into him without looking. One point, he just sort of walked off the court and took his drink bottle with him. Sat outside the gym for ten minutes and came right back in like nothing happened.'

Less than ten minutes after hanging up the phone, Hopper was jamming a pile of folders into the glovebox in his car.  
He could do paperwork on his kitchen table, but he couldn’t keep an eye on Billy from the police station.

As it happened, he wouldn’t even make his way through a third of the files stacked in his glovebox that night, and he had never been more relieved to have made the decision to leave work early than he was that afternoon.

……………….

Billy was pacing, which wasn’t unusual for him.  
He had struck Hopper early on as being an energetic kid, even as far as teenage boys went, and his quiet, but constant motion was an odd juxtaposition to El’s calm, familiar presence within the cabin.  
That afternoon, it was different.

Hopper knew that Billy had a reluctance to wear shirts in most situations; He had seen the kid hanging out in worrying temperatures with his entire upper body exposed, dressed like he was on his way to a California beach in the summer.  
Maybe he ran hot, and his relentless, fidgety movements contributed to a naturally warm body temperature, or maybe he was just especially proud of his body.  
Either way, he at least made the effort to keep his shirt on when he was in the cabin, most of the time. Especially when El was around, not that Hopper thought she could have cared any less about it.

Billy wasn’t wearing a t-shirt as he moved around the cabin that afternoon, just a pair of shorts that looked like his Hawkins’ basketball ones, but with a different school logo printed on the leg, and he didn’t even seem to notice the raised eyebrow Hopper had sent him when he first walked in.  
He seemed different, wired-up in a way Hopper hadn’t seen him before, all jerky movements and darting eyes like he had more nervous energy than his body could handle and he couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it.

El was watching a TV show he didn’t recognise on the couch, but he could see her glancing over at Billy frequently while he moved around the kitchen, rearranging coffee jars and tupperware containers on the bench several times before eventually leaving them in an approximation of the exact same order they had been placed.

He didn’t look like he was up for a conversation about whatever was going on in his head at that moment, so Hopper decided to give him time, let him fill the cabin with anxious energy and rearrange odd items around the place to his heart’s content, and talk to him when once he cooled off a bit.

The cooling off period didn’t seem to come.

Hopper had signed off on two incident reports, filled in three forms for a magistrate he’d worked with several times outside of Hawkins, gone through two cups of coffee and talked quietly with El over chicken noodle soup and toast, which Billy had refused to join them for. It wasn’t the most nutritious meal he could have compiled from his kitchen, but it required less than ten minutes in the vicinity of his pantry, which Billy had been organising cans and packets in at the time without showing any signs of slowing down.  
It was exhausting just to watch.

The breaking point came that night, when El was in her room talking to the Party on her walkie talkie and Hopper was trying to focus on an appeal for a parking ticket that Powell had issued one of the school teachers a week before.

Billy stopped in front of the table he was working on and turned to face Hopper, arms crossed tightly over his chest and his eyes were immediately drawn to the way the boy’s fingernails dug into the skin of his biceps hard enough to leave red and white patchy marks on the surface.

Jesus.

Hopper was starting to suspect that he should have done something before it got to this point; Interfered that afternoon instead of giving Billy room to calm down, because that obviously hadn’t been working for him.

He waited for Billy to speak, remembering the night just under a week ago that brought them here, the image of Billy trying to force words through his teeth for Steve’s sake and struggling to get them out.  
It made something coil uncomfortably tight in his stomach to see the visual reminder of that night standing in front of him, looking for words.  
If Billy was trying to figure out how to talk to him, he could give him the patience to do that.

Billy licked his lips, finally settled his eyes on Hopper and his face took on a deliberately hard expression before he spoke.

‘How long do I have?’  
Hopper blinked. He ran the words through his head, trying to give meaning to the question and not coming up with any.  
‘How long until what, Billy?’  
Billy’s eyes flashed with something, his facial expression settling into something harder still, but more authentic now.  
’Until you take me back to Neil, Chief.’

Okay.

_Fuck._

That…hadn’t been a question Hopper had been anticipating, and he wasn’t sure how to go about answering it.  
Billy just held his stare.  
It sounded ridiculous to his own ears now, but it had never occurred to him that he would have to explain to Billy that he wasn’t going back to Neil at any point.  
He’d just sort of assumed, naively, that Billy would know that being found crumpled and blood-soaked in his bedroom by the chief of police meant that he wasn’t going to be sent back there.  
But Billy had been in foster care back in California, and the implications of his question hit him like a truck.  
Hopper had to move away from that line of thinking before he was visibly seething with the anger he felt for so many people, including himself, because God knows that wouldn’t be received calmly by Billy.  
He still hadn’t given him an answer.

‘Billy-’  
He stood up from his chair and immediately regretted it as the kid flinched back violently, his eyes locking on Hopper’s body.  
He stopped, making a conscious effort to let his arms fall by his side, straightening his fingers slightly more than what felt natural, just in case they could be interpreted as curling into a fist.  
‘Billy, you’re not going back to Neil. I’m not sending you back to a dangerous house like that.’  
Billy’s eyes raised to meet his, visibly startled.  
Hopper thought about his unpacked duffle bag, his unfazed acceptance of waking up in a new place and the quiet way he’d moved around the cabin all week, like he was patiently waiting for the bruising to heal up so he could go back to the man who inflicted them.

’So where am I going? Hawkins have a group home I don’t know about?’  
’Nope. Just me.’  
Billy looked like he was struggling for words again.  
‘You’re serious.’  
It wasn’t a question.  
It was a shocked, incredulous statement.

Hopper met his stare and didn’t waiver as he chose his next words carefully.  
‘My job is to protect and serve the people of Hawkins, kid. Not hand scared teenagers up to abusive men on a silver platter.’  
Billy scoffed, rolled his eyes and Hopper was reminded of that girl from several years before in the back of the court room, rolling her eyes at a jury.  
He was getting worked up; Hopper could see him shift in place and suck in breaths a bit deeper than before.  
‘My old man isn’t abusive, Chief. Just a prick. No law against that.’  
’There’s a law against beating your kid so bad he can’t stand.’  
‘Don’t do this.’  
‘Do what, Billy? Do you want to go back there?’

Billy was backing away, shaking his head slowly at Hopper like he didn’t have any idea how to navigate this.  
Hopper could relate to that.

‘You don’t have a fucking clue,’ Billy muttered without looking at him.  
He was still moving backwards, eyes blown wider than they had been a minute ago and Hopper felt like he was talking to a pressure-sensitive explosive device, his own words making up some invisible detonator.  
There was nothing he could think to say that would calm Billy down.  
‘You think you’re the first person to pull this shit, Chief?’  
‘Billy, I just want-‘  
‘Cop brings the stray kid home and adopts him and it’s a real fucking good story, is that what you’re after?’  
‘What are you angry at, Billy? Do you like getting ki-‘  
‘Fucking finish that sentence, Chief.’

Billy’s tenuous grasp on whatever emotion was going on beneath the surface was slipping so fast it was scary, his protective body language giving way to something more frantic, hand bracing on a wall next to him, pupils blown.

‘You think that’s how it works? You knock my old man out on the living room floor and life’s good again?’  
Billy’s right hand came up to rub roughly at his chest, his other hand rubbing up and down his opposite arm like he was brushing off phantom sensations, digging his nails into patches of skin painfully every few beats as he spoke.  
‘You’re like every other fucking cop-‘  
‘Every other cop who what, Billy? Tried to help you?’

He didn’t want to get frustrated but Jesus Christ, he had no idea what to do or say and Billy was on the attack.

‘ _Help me?_ ’

Billy actually laughed then, hard and mean.

‘Everything thinks they’re _fucking helping_ and everyone wants you to be _fucking grateful_ _about it._ You’re a cop. What happens after you’ve finished at a crime scene, Chief? You move in with the battered wife and the alcoholic prick?'

He was shouting now, moving toward him instead of away.  
Hopper was so far out of his depth.  
Billy just looked so angry, so unreachable, his chest moving up and down in frantic bursts like he’d sparred thirty rounds and was winding up for another.  
There were tears in his eyes.

’No, you don’t stick around for that. You get in your car, _and you drive away_. You know who’s left in the aftermath?’

Billy’s chest just kept moving quicker, more convulsive spasm than inhale, and Hopper was horrified when the tears started to fall. Billy didn’t even seem to notice them.

‘ _Us_. We’re left behind. We don’t get to leave at the end of the day. When you get bored and send us back, we pay the price. _Not you. Us_.’

He couldn’t stop shaking.  
At some point, he must have realised that he was crying, because his hands came up to rub hard at his face. It didn’t work, partially because his movements were jerky and disjointed, and partially because the tears just didn’t stop.

There should be supermax prisons built specifically for adults that let kids down this badly; The kind of prison that transported inmates around in waist-chains and handcuffs, so that they might understand exactly how trapped and helpless they made the children in their care feel.  
No child should look as distressed as Billy looked in that moment, muscles coiled so tightly it had to hurt, tears and panic written across his face while his body braced for impact that he’d learnt would always come.

‘Billy.’

Hopper spoke softly, deliberately.  
He took a step toward him, worried about how this was going to play out, whether Billy was going to try and leave the cabin or lash out at Hopper like he had done to Steve, once, and he had no idea how to handle either of those scenarios in a way that wouldn’t be terrifying for the kid, no matter how careful he was.  
He took another step toward him, and Billy made a noise that sounded like a scream muffled between lips, before his brain seemed to flick some kind of switch and then he was slamming his body back into a wall behind him in a frantic, illogical attempt to get away from Hopper.

‘Billy!’  
He lunged toward him, hating the way he was obviously scaring the kid but desperate to stop him from trying to run away or hurt himself in his panic.  
‘Billy, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.’  
Even as he spoke, he could tell Billy wasn’t hearing him.  
Blue eyes stared right though his own, pupils blown like he was fighting for his life. In another, earlier version of this experience, maybe he had been.

He was hyperventilating, the movements of his chest having sped up at a gradual pace until they were spiralling out of control, leaving him gasping for breath and becoming more and more visibly scared as he couldn’t slow his intake of oxygen down.

‘Easy, Billy, you’re okay. It’ll pass.’  
‘ _I’m sorry_.’

Hopper’s ears barely caught the quiet statement as it was gasped out with a stuttered, failed attempt to exhale.  
His stomach twisted at the sound, and he was about to ask if Billy knew who the was talking to when Billy kept going.  
‘I’m sorry. _I’m sorry_.’  
It didn’t stop, and it was when he was stood very still and Billy, suddenly, flinched back away from something Hopper couldn’t see that he realised how far into his own head the kid had gone.  
His knees buckled at some point, and Hopper had to dig his feet into the floor and will himself not to rush forward and catch him, knowing that the thud of his back hitting the wall and his body dropping to the floor would probably be far less traumatising than any sudden movement or physical contact on his own part would be.

Billy seemed to curl into himself, gasping and unaware as tears kept falling from his eyes that, at some point, had clenched tightly shut.  
Hopper tried to force himself to be calm, remembering the number of PTSD episodes he’d witnessed in soldiers when he was serving, and how much worse things were likely to get if he couldn’t exude calm in the face of trauma.

Slowly, he lowered himself to the floor, not moving any closer, just quietly adopting a position similar to Billy’s and breathing slowly, talking quietly about whatever topic came to mind as he waited it out.

When Billy seemed to gain enough awareness to understand him, Hopper just smiled gently, _it’s good to have you back there, kid_ , and kept up the quiet rambling.

\------------------------

Hopper usually made an effort not to smoke near the cabin, at least while El was inside.  
Before she had come into his life, he would chain-smoke unfiltered camels inside the walls of his apartment, cracking a single window open just enough to allow for airflow and then walk around in synthetic, nicotine-induced calm, the way he was never able to do before the divorce.  
Now, he mostly tried to restrict the habit to places that weren’t frequently inhabited by children.

At some point along the line, between El and the rest of the party, his cabin became one of those places.  
Billy, surprisingly, never had to be told to move outside to smoke; From the first day he’d shown up with the rest of the party, following closely behind Steve and averting his eyes from Hopper whenever the man glanced toward the two boys, he had instinctively drifted toward the porch before pulling the lighter out of his pocket.  
At first, he had thought Billy was just heavily addicted to the nicotine when he took note of how long his trips to the porch, with or without Steve in tow occurred.

Eventually, he realised that Billy wasn’t inhaling an entire pack in a single sitting while Dustin talked loudly and pointedly about lung cancer statistics from inside cabin, but instead made each cigarette last a really long time, pacing a Marlboro light for twenty minutes sometimes.  
Hopper had once offered him one of his own cigarettes and Billy had been quick to turn him down in favour of his own, milder brand, and he realised that it wasn’t the taste or the strength of the nicotine that Billy was actually interested in.  
As far as he could tell, it was more about the action involved- the excuse it provided for him to move away from any situation happening indoors that he didn’t want to be there for, the way it gave him something to do with his hands and the way it acted as an easy, mildly stimulating activity to focus on.

Hopper couldn’t relate to the kid’s constant need to fidget or his disinterest in anything stronger than lights.  
From where he was sitting on the porch, sucking down his own brand of nicotine and tar as he tried to process what had just happened, he briefly wondered if he should make an exception to the rule against smoking indoors, just for the night.

The night air stung his face, even with the extra layer of clothing he had put on before moving outside to give Billy privacy while he talked on the phone attached to a wall in the living room.

When he had finally calmed down, he had leant back against the wall behind him, tilting his head up toward the ceiling and squeezing his eyes shut with clear exhaustion and frustrated embarrassment written across his face.  
After several seconds visibly reorienting himself with what had just occurred, he had spoken, in quiet, determined breath.

‘I want to call Steff.’

Hopper nodded, thankful to have something he could actually do for the kid now, before remembering that it was well after business hours, and bit down on his lip.

‘Does she work nights? I can call her CPS contact number and ask if she’s working-‘  
‘I know her number.’

Hopper furrowed his brow, wondering how the woman would feel answering her personal phone with a work call at that hour.  
He didn’t point it out to him, but Hopper wasn’t even sure if she was considered assigned to him now that he didn’t live within her department’s jurisdiction.  
On the other hand, Steff had been the one to make contact with him at the police station, apparently after trying to find out where he had gone for months, whether Billy was still assigned to her legally anymore or not.  
So he had left the kid to make the phone call, hovering near the front door just long enough to make sure he got hold of her, just long enough to hear her quiet, muffled voice say something he couldn’t make out and Billy’s deliberate, steady breaths that he took before speaking into the phone. As soon as he was sure that things were as okay as they could be in that moment, he had left, giving the kid some privacy to talk to someone that would actually know what to say back.

………………………………………..

If he had felt useless before, sitting on the front steps to his home when the kindest thing he could do for a kid in his care was stay away, it was nothing on what he felt when Billy opened the front door, wearing a hoodie, now, and addressed him without really looking at him.

’She wants to talk to you.’

Hopper steeled himself in the time it took to press the remnants of his cigarette into an ash-tray and approach the phone where it dangled from the wall, while Billy silently pulled a towel from a cupboard and retreated to the bathroom to shower.  
He wondered if the woman was about to grill him on what he did to Billy to leave him that shaken, or ask him ‘Why didn’t you…’ followed by so many possible endings to that question.

He should have read the book closer. Or sat Billy down the first day he woke up in the cabin and talked to him.

‘Hello?’  
‘Hi, I’m Steff. We spoke on the phone a few weeks ago, and apparently after hanging up, you staged a rescue mission for Billy.’

Hopper huffed a single, surprised laugh, taken aback by her wording.  
She sounded warm, friendly in a way he hadn’t expected, considering the context of the phone call.

‘I was already monitoring the kid’s situation,’ He admitted, remembering the number of times he’d wanted to help Billy and been too cautious of scaring him away completely, ‘I brought him back to my place. I have a daughter that I adopted just over a year ago here, too. Kid freaked out when I told him he was living with me from now on, so I’m not even bracing that word with him yet.’

‘Is that something you’d want?’

That made Hopper pause. Billy was sixteen years old and didn’t trust him, so the idea of him being open to adoption wasn’t as clear-cut as it had been with El. Not to mention, Billy wasn’t an orphan. An adoption process would inevitably involve Neil’s parental rights being terminated and Billy being put through a lot to make that happen. If Billy wanted that, Hopper wouldn’t hesitate. He just didn’t think it would be soon.

‘I want Billy to be safe,’ He settled on.

And God, Hopper could hear her sigh through the phone line.

‘I heard he had a tough night.’

It was Hopper’s turn to sigh, then.

‘He panicked when I told him he wasn’t going home to Neil. I think he’s scared of me, and I don’t know how to get him to trust that I’m not just going to hand him back over.’  
Even as he said it, he winced, thinking about how many times Billy had been taken away and then given back to Neil.

He heard a hum of acknowledgement through the phone.

’It might not look like it,’ Steff told him thoughtfully, ‘But tonight was a really good step.’

Hopper snorted.

‘I really don’t think that was a step in the right direction. You didn’t see him tonight-‘

‘I’ve known Billy since he was eight, and I know exactly how he was tonight.’

She cut him off swiftly, and he took a second to process the words. When she spoke next, her voice was softer, but no less sure.

‘I know what happened, Jim. I know when he started getting overwhelmed and lashing out, you didn’t hurt him for it. For Billy, that was huge.’

That was a horrifying idea.  
Hopper closed his eyes, trying to force earlier images of Billy flinching away from him out of his head.

‘I tried to go to him and he looked at me like a shark’s dorsal fin. And then he _apologised_.’  
His voice was shaky in a way he hadn’t expected, and it surprised him.

Steff, thankfully, pretended not to notice.  
‘Billy stayed at my house for a night, a couple of years ago.’ She said it conversationally, but Hopper sensed something important in the statement.  
‘Because of my role in the department, I’m allowed to take kids in on an emergency basis for short-term periods. I usually don’t, but Billy…'  
She trailed off for a second, taking a breath before forging ahead.

‘He needed somewhere safe to be that night. I live alone, and I could provide that place for him. When I asked him if he wanted to stay in the spare room in my apartment, he froze for a couple of seconds, then he just started screaming at me like I’d never heard from him before.’

Hopper knew what she meant by Billy freezing up- he’d seen it happen just a few hours before, and it was like watching a grenade in the second before it exploded.  
Steff just kept going.  
‘He was telling me to _fuck off, get the fuck away from him_ , called me every name you can think of while he backed into a bookshelf trying to get away from me. I’ve worked with a lot of hurt kids, and it takes a lot for me to go home at the end of the day shaken. The day Billy looked at me from the corner of my office and told me with complete sincerity, “ _I’m not having sex with you_ ,” that was one of those days. Billy was thirteen at the time.’

Hopper didn’t have words to respond to that.  
He was pretty sure there was no appropriate response to something like that, but if there was, he didn’t have it.

‘Was Billy..?’

Hopper didn’t want to ask the question, didn’t want to jump to horrifying conclusions or have them confirmed. He had read Billy’s file.

’I think that’s a question you should only ask Billy,’ She told him, speaking carefully, ‘And only when he seems ready to share it with you.’

That was practically a confirmation in itself, and it made his stomach twist into something tight and heavy.

‘I need to know if he’s okay.’

’So ask him. You want to know if he’s doing okay? How to help him feel safe? Just ask him. He’s a pretty honest kid, if you’re direct about what you’re asking. And before you react to something he’s said or done, ask yourself why he might be doing it. If you do that for him, you’ll build up trust, slowly.’

……………………………

When he finally retreated to his bedroom that night, Hopper wondered whether Billy had told Steff what he was doing, if that was what made her add that last piece of advice she had given him, “Ask yourself why," or whether she just knew Billy well enough to have instinctively predicted his behaviour.

After hanging up the phone and taking several slow, deep breaths, he had approached the closed door of Billy’s room.  
His entire body was heavy with fatigue from the day, the anxious, wired energy that had filled the cabin for hours and the subsequent emotional rollercoaster that had followed.  
If it was exhausting for him to just witness Billy’s visceral responses to his past and present, he had no idea how the kid himself was even staying awake through the day.

He had knocked softly, twisting the doorknob and stepping into the room, immediately noticing that there were now two boys occupying the space, and an open window to account for the addition.

Steve and Billy were huddled close to each other on the bed, limbs tangled within each other and the sheets; Billy’s head against Steve’s chest and Steve’s arm thrown loosely around him, pulling him close.  
They both looked close to sleep, but Hopper noticed the way Steve’s eyes widened as he entered the room, the way he didn’t make a move to leave or explain himself instantly, like he was worried about Hopper’s reaction to his presence, but not worried enough to risk putting distance between himself and Billy.  
Hopper wasn’t impressed that he’d obviously snuck in through the window, but he respected the way Steve had stayed close to Billy even after he entered the room.

Billy must have felt as tired as he looked, because even having Hopper walk into the room and see him in a pretty private moment with someone who had climbed in through his window, wasn’t enough to faze him in that moment.  
He didn’t even lift is head from Steve’s chest, just watched him for his reaction.

Hopper knew the boys were close, but seeing them like that made him wonder how much more to their relationship existed behind closed doors. He knew Steve had dated girls in the past, and he had heard more rumours about Billy in Hawkins than he wanted to. He also knew some people were just more tactile than others, but there was an intimacy between them that went beyond that.

Momentarily, he wondered if he should tell them to keep the door open three inches, the way El had to when Mike was there.  
He dismissed the idea just as quickly. Billy was older than El, so it was different, and he didn’t want to make an assumption that could turn out to be wrong.  
If his assumption was right, and there was something more than friendship between the two of them, telling them to leave the door open was implying something in an obvious way, and he didn’t know how to navigate any sort of dialogue around sex or sexuality with Billy, who he was starting to realise had layers of trauma in places it shouldn’t ever exist.

All in all, he was way too tired to make a big deal about anything in that moment.  
He looked at Billy, remembering Steff’s words, and asked what he needed to know.

‘Do you feel safer with Steve here?’

_He’s a pretty honest kid if you’re direct about what you’re asking._

Billy nodded, wordlessly, and Steve rubbed his thumb over Billy’s bicep, looking unaware of his own movement.  
Hopper nodded back, and right before he turned around, addressed Billy again.

‘You’re safe here, kid. I’m never going to hit you. I can promise that.’

He cut his eyes to Steve.  
‘Harrington, I have a door. Use it next time.'

As he shut the door behind him, he couldn’t help smiling a bit. The box he had brought from Billy’s old bedroom was now sitting on his nightstand.  
It was small, but it was the first thing Billy had unpacked from his duffle bag since he got there.  
Steff’s voice rang in his ears; ‘It might not look like it, but tonight was a really good step.'


	3. Waiting on the sun to rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey =)  
> I am so sorry this took a thousand times longer than I was aiming for. Things have been *v rough.* Some elements of this story are loosely based on personal experience and some of the ways Billy's trauma manifests in this chapter are reflective of that. I'm really nervous to post this chapter because it's through Billy's perspective, I didn't want to backpedal and show events of the last few chapters through his eyes like I've read in some amazing stories, because I don't have the patience lmao. I really hope you enjoy it, please come and talk to me in the comments if you like, I love interacting with you guys. Also feel 100% free to make suggestions if you want to see anything specific at all and I'll do my best to fit it into the story =). 
> 
> Warning for allusions to noncon and past suicide in this chapter; Stay safe.

Ironically, the nightmares become more frequent when he’s away from Neil.

The first thing he notices when he’s thrust into consciousness is the taste of salt and copper in his mouth. His heart’s skipping over itself, pumping against his ribcage too quickly and there’s a moment when his entire body locks up, paralysed and cold as his stomach twists into the familiar coil so tightly that it hurts.

The room is so dark that he can’t distinguish any of the furniture in his surroundings, and he wills his heart to _calm the fuck down_ so he can listen, just in case someone’s there.

He wet the bed until he was eight.

It happened once when he was thirteen, but he’s willing to bury the memory of it underneath all the other ones from that period in time; it was far from the most fucked up thing to happen.

He doesn’t do that anymore.

He doesn’t scream in his sleep, either, not like some of the boys he lived with in California screamed.

But he’s used to waking up with blood in his mouth and an indent on his lip from biting down in his sleep.

When the adrenaline fades and he can think clearly again, he’s in the cabin.

He still doesn’t know _why_ the Chief apparently collects fucked up kids like collectibles; Other people just hoard stamps and other shit they don’t need, but Hawkins is a dead-end town and he can’t blame the guy for being bored enough to want a more challenging hobby.

He kicks the covers off and pulls the first pair of sweatpants he can find on the floor on before making his way out of the bedroom and down the short hallway toward the bathroom, irritated and fuzzy from exhaustion. The hot water tap takes a thousand fucking years to run warm on a good day, and he’s been in this place long enough to know that by now, but he still hisses when he cups the water in his hands and it’s freezing, quickly shoving it into his mouth and rinsing until the water runs clear down the drain.

The cut isn’t visible unless he peels his lower lip down with his fingers and looks in the mirror, and he’s glad no one at school is going to see him with another split lip, avert their eyes like he’s a domestic abuse victim that they don’t know how to approach.

_Fuck sakes._

His life feels like a circle. And he doesn’t know how to break it.

It’s only on his way back to his bedroom that he realises the living room light is on and that Hopper is sitting at the table, paperwork sprawled over it, looking up at Billy when he stops in the entryway. 

He takes in the sight of the man who looks like he could use a long weekend to sleep through in its entirety, coffee cups lined up in a row.

‘Why the fuck are you..?’

‘Couldn’t sleep,’ Hopper grunts, looking back down at his paper work.

The first few days after he’d cried like a bitch on the same carpet he stands on now were awkward at best, at least for him. He’d avoided eye contact with the guy, embarrassed and pissed at himself, but things were okay now. Mostly. 

He’s awake now, not in a rush to fall back into the fucked-up ocean current dream that had woken him up, so he walks over and takes the seat opposite of Hopper, propping one foot up on the chair next to him and looking down at the first sheet of paper in front of him.

A hand hastily reaches out to snatch it away, but he sees the crime scene photo and flinches back anyway, the image of the man lying on the pavement with blood pooling around his head hitting him too close to home on at least three level

’Sorry, fuck, um-‘ Hopper shoves the picture, and several others under different sheets of paper, nearly knocking a mug over as he worked.

’Sorry, kid. You probably didn’t need to see that.’

‘Who’d he piss off?’

’Nope. Classified information.'

He snorts, the same irritation from earlier coming back to him in a sharp burst.

’So’s my social services file, but you got a pretty good look at that one.’

Maybe the Chief thinks he has a point, or maybe he’s just too fucking tired to argue with a teenager at half twelve in the morning, but either way, he concedes.

‘A security guard. He’s claiming it was self defence, that the guy was going for him and he hit him once to get him to back off, but the victim fell back and hit his head on the ground.’

He picks up a report with lots of writing on it and skims the page.

It looks like an interview transcript, the security guard answering to someone asking him about what happened.

’You don’t buy it?’

Hopper rubs at his temples like he can feel a headache coming on.

’Not a word of it, but there’s no way of telling whether he’s lying about being attacked or not.’

‘He’s lying.’

Hopper stares at him, and he stares back, waiting for the man to shake his head and tell him to _go to bed, kid._

‘Why do you say that?’

’The interview guy asked him how hard he hit the other guy and he says some shit about _using the minimum amount of force he had to._ ’

For a second, an image of Steve underneath him that night at the Buyer’s house comes to mind, and he tries to shove it as far from the forefront of his head as he can.

‘If you’re being attacked and you’re hitting in self-defence, you aren’t thinking about how to hit the guy as _lightly as you can._ You just swing at him. If he was being attacked, he would’ve said _as hard as I could_ and meant it.’

Hopper was smiling at him, just slightly, but he didn’t look like he was rolling his eyes internally.

‘What if he was hitting as hard as the could in self defence and didn’t want to say it in the interview?’

He shrugs, feeling the restless tension start to take over his muscles the way it always does when he thinks about blood and bodies and limbs crumpled on pavement.

’Still lying then.’

……………………………….

He doesn’t know if every small town’s the same or if it’s just a Hawkins thing, but the place makes him want to tear his own skin off more often than not.

Maybe it’s why Neil moved them all out to this shithole; Hoping Billy would snap under the concentrated, conservative population and the lack of places to hide and people he trusted enough to run to when things got too hard, so that maybe he’d wrap himself around a tree and stop being Neil’s problem.

Sometimes it feels like everyone who looks at him in the halls can see his scars.

It’s just too fucking much sometimes.

He’s sitting in the cramped English literature classroom, coiled tightly and counting seconds until the bell. Jonathon Buyers is slouched in the seat next to him and he doesn’t hate the guy or anything, but he knows that Hopper is close with his mom, and the thought of Jonathon hearing something about him is enough to make his stomach twist.

Every time he makes an effort to breathe deeply and relax one of his muscles the way his first shrink had taught him to do when he got like this, something else tenses up in response, so quickly it's almost comical. His hands wander over pencils and tap against the lid of the desk in restlessness and his shoulder and his stomach _really fucking hurt._

By the time the teacher ambles to the front of the classroom ten minutes into the period and starts talking, he can already feel it building in his chest and joints and veins. 

He’d seen Neil that morning; sat in the lane next to him while they both waited for the light turn green so that Neil could turn left toward his job and Billy could continue on toward the school.

He’d pretended not to see him, looked straight forward and told himself that he lived with the Chief of Police and if Neil got out of his fucking car, he’d run it and explain it to Hopper later.

Easy.

Now it’s second period English and he can’t pull his head out of the past and into the present. Jonathon had looked surprised when Billy pulled out the chair next to him at the back of the classroom and sat down in it, less emotive or blatant than any surprised look Steve had ever given him, but enough to make him feel like he _radiated_ traumatised kid and like everyone who looked at him could see it.

He hates it, but his usual spot is in the middle row and he doesn’t want to have his back to anyone now. 

He wants Mitchell, and Sunny and Tyson and every other boy from California he’d thought of as family before getting dragged across the country and torn away from all of them. 

Fuck, he misses everyone so much it hurts.

He knows he’s vibrating nervous energy and at some point, his fingers had moved from twisting his own stationery to Buyers’ pens and it’s gotta be a fucking testament to how fucked up he looks that Buyers doesn’t call him on it.

He only talks to him when everyone else in the room starts reaching into their school bags and pulling something out. 

‘Get your book, Hargrove.’

He doesn’t fucking know what book. His hands squeeze over the pencil between his fingers.

‘Hargrove?’

He cranes his neck to try and see what book everyone brought that he probably didn’t even get around to buying before the school year started.

‘Use this one,’ Jonathon mutters, sliding a copy of _The Colour Purple_ between the two of them, opening it to the first chapter and easing back into his chair, not even glancing toward him.

He wouldn’t admit it if someone held a gun to his head and tried to make him talk, but he was fucking touched.

The woman started reading and he doesn’t bother resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the fact that they have to read together as a class like they’re in elementary school.

Three sentences into the first chapter, and he thinks he might throw up.

The adrenaline surge seems dissipate in his blood vessels, and it’s like all the fight drains out of him, leaving his legs and hands shaking and his stomach hurting and his mind fogged over. 

They need to put fucking warnings on books like this.

Hawkins High school could have chosen any novel it fucking wanted and they chose something he thought was about art or some shit and the first line is about someone being raped.

He wants Steve, who’s dopey and loveable and can’t fight for shit, but who can _always_ step up and be strong for someone when they need him to be. He wants Steve to hug him somewhere quiet and safe.

He wants to be somewhere he feels safe.

He can see his hand shaking on the desk, and he flexes his fingers; Stretches them right out and then squeezes them tightly into a fist before laying it flat again, but his hand just won’t still. 

Jonathon is staring at him and he knows how he probably looks, so he tries to casually reach over and turn the page like a _normal fucking person_ when he’s pretty sure its the right time, but his hand is jerky and vibrating and he almost rips the page out of the fucking book and nearly throws a punch at the first thing within his reach.

He shoves it down, buries it in his chest and counts the seconds.

By the end of the lesson, his jaw hurts from clenching his teeth so hard.

The coach probably thinks he’s a fucking head case, and he wouldn’t be that far off the mark. Most practices are after school, and by the time he makes it through the seven-hour school day, he’s usually wound up tight and ready to snap.

Ten minutes into practice, they’re doing suicide runs up and down the basketball court to warm up. 

His knees and ankles jar painfully every time he pivots, and his chest is pulled too tightly, and he feels oddly detached from everything his body’s telling him.

Physically, he’s close to boiling over and lashing out at anything in front him, legs shaking slightly from the constant tension but flooded with enough cortisol and epinephrine that he knows he’s not in any danger of collapsing. Mentally… it’s foggier.

There are no racing thoughts. Kind of.

He can hold on for another twenty minutes.

If the storm that started rolling in at the end of the last period eases up slightly, their coach might even let them go early so they can get to their cars before the rain started coming down again. They all have to strain their ears to hear the whistle over the noise from outside.

Billy knows the reason coaches like him is that shockingly, he’s really good at listening to the instructions they call from the sidelines and implementing whatever they say into his passes instantly.

In the present moment, he can vaguely make out a muffled voice, can see his coaches’ lips moving and figures he’s probably saying something, and if he could stop the blood rushing within his ears for just a second he could probably even make out what it is. In his peripheral, he sees the other players on the court, running back and forth between different points in an effort to get away from the people defending them, and he looks down, tries to focus on the ball because the movement is making him dizzy.

Steve had taken a single look at him in the locker room before practice and seemed to know something was wrong, had put a hand on his shoulder in the closest display of intimacy he could use in the presence of their entire team, and quietly asked him if needed to leave.

He kind of wishes he’d given a different answer, now.

A clap of thunder hits loud enough to rattle the entire gym, seems to carry on for a second longer than the others have and he doesn’t give a fuck about whether the team are exchanging side-long glances at one another, silently weighing up the likelihood of their star player and token loose canon blowing a circuit and freaking out in front of them all. He’s busy concentrating on not throwing up and on forcing images out of his head that he tried to leave behind in California.

‘ _Billy_?’

A hand on his shoulder that he flinches back from, nearly falls until two hands gripping his upper arms to steady him and he realises Steve isn’t focussed on the ball anymore, but he can’t remember seeing him pass it since he’d intercepted a throw from Tommy.

For all he knows, Steve had stepped past him, jogged over and shot a layup while Billy’s brain was malfunctioning.

He hopes Steve isn’t about to tell him to plant his feet and then shove him to the ground again like he had once done to him. He doesn’t think so; They aren’t like that anymore, haven’t been for at least six months, but he still worries. He doesn’t know if he could get back up, if he did.

His coach is shouting again, irritated now, loud enough and sharp enough that Billy can’t make out exactly what he’s saying, but strongly suspects it’s directed at him, seeing as he’s the only player standing stationary while everyone else runs up and down the court.

‘ _B? What’s going on, man_?’

Another hard, sharp call from their coach meets his ears and it doesn’t even sound angry anymore, just alarmed, which is somehow worse because the last time he was hearing thunder and shouting he was also frantically trying to administer first aid he didn’t know how to give- the desperate whimper that comes out of his mouth is mortifying and Steve is looking at him like he’s an injured puppy that he’s just realising is going to have to be put down.

He watches Steve turn to yell something at their coach, probably telling him to _stop fucking yelling at him_ , and Billy turns and stumbles toward the locker room. 

He hears a familiar voice calling after him, knows he’s probably attracted attention from more than just Steve and their coach by now, and jogs the last stretch, staggering through the locker room with a hand on the wall.

It smells like body odour and several different kinds of deodorant.

He tries to inhale it, as disgusting as it is, because at least it’s something tethering him to the world around him, but the deodorant fumes make him choke and cough as he slides down the back wall, feel like his throat’s closing up even more than it was a minute ago. In the back of his mind, he wonders how a student with asthma handles being in there. 

A body is walking toward him, and he can’t see from where he’s crouched on the floor who it is, but he’s fairly sure he knows. The moving figure squats down in front of him, two hands seem to reach for him and he’s pushing back frantically before knocking an elbow into the wall at an angle that makes him hiss at the sudden burst of pain.

‘I’m sorry, just, here-‘

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but then there are hands manhandling him all of a sudden, and a distant, faded voice in the back of his head huffs at the fact that _this isn’t even about Neil_ , this isn’t even his trauma, but he still feels like an abused kid flinching away from fingers that aren’t even trying to hurt him.

He’s pushed back against a wall, and his chest feels just the tiniest bit more open as he realises Steve had pried him out of the ball he’d curled himself into and propped him up in a way that opened his chest up.

Jesus.

He can see the worried face in front of him, his lips moving, and Billy tries to make eye contact, to listen to what he was saying.

‘Billy? Look at me. Come on you’re doing good.’ 

He nearly huffs a laugh at that, would’ve if he was able to, because even when Billy is struggling with something as simple as _breathing_ , his Pretty Boy is encouraging him.

He’d once broken a plate over Steve's head. The voice fades back in as a thumb strokes over the skin near his forehead, grounding him to reality a bit.

‘…Hey, focus on me man, you’re not asthmatic, right?’

It takes him too long to interpret the words, they bounce around in his skull and he almost gets lost trying to find their meaning when fingers grasp at his hair and pull, the pain just low enough to bring him back to focus and he wonders if it’s the lack of oxygen to his brain that’s making everything harder.

_Oxygen._

He replays the words in his head.

Tries to say ‘No,’ but his breath is still coming through a straw and he just ends up whining, terrified and pathetic, and shakes his head. 

Steve seems to get it anyway, and when he understands that he doesn’t need to be sprinting to find an inhaler, he settles in front of Billy, urgency and concern in his gaze as he seems to try and mask his expression into something calm.

Billy knows that expression and it hits him like a freight train, another fresh wave of hysteria crashing over him because _he tried so hard to look calm, he’d watched the terror in Michael’s eyes and seen him vomiting blood and fuck, you’re supposed to turn someone on their sides if they’re vomiting but he didn’t know the protocol if their neck was broken, too._

_He’d held his hand so fucking tightly and tried so hard to look calm when his brother had been calling the ambulance, leaning over him to meet his eyes and promising him it was going to be okay. It wasn’t going to be okay, but Michael had once told him that he believed in reincarnation and that he wanted to come back as a really irritating insect or some shit and never leave cops or Christians alone, and Billy hoped he still believed it at that moment and that he wasn’t as scared as he might’ve been._

_He wasn’t okay, and Billy hated himself for having failed to realise it ever since._

‘ _Billy_ , come back.’

His shirt is soaked through with sweat and it sticks to his skin uncomfortably, making him feel constricted and he fumbles at its hem, trying to get a grip on it to peel it over his head, but his fingers won’t cooperate- keep shaking or trying to clench into fists.

‘Easy. Shirt? You need it off?’

He thinks he nods. 

Hands steadier than his own grasp at the material, not even hesitating despite how he gross it must be, and Harrington’s pulling it up, his arms being pulled clumsily through the sleeves, one by one, and pulled over his head quickly. 

The moment where he can’t see is jarring and he thinks he makes a noise, but it’s over quickly.

‘You need your necklace off too?’

He doesn’t even notice the feeling of the pendant anymore; he only notices the rare times that it’s off. His hand flies to his chest to clutch it, feels the sweat and reassuring stainless steel under his palm, shaking his head.

‘Okay. Necklace stays on. You’re okay.’ 

Arms rubbing up and down his arms.

……………………………….

When Steve keeps an arm wrapped around his shoulder and walks right next to him into the cabin, he wonders if there’s a single word that means _thank you_ and _I think I love you_ and _I’m still sorry for the broken plate_ and _I’m really fucking embarrassed_ all at the same time.

Hopper watches TV with them late into the night, and maybe it’s because the tear marks on his cheeks would have gotten him clocked in the eye by Neil and instead, get him a gentle presence and pizza for dinner by his new guardian, but he ends up curled between the two bodies on either side of him.

He doesn’t get up for school the next day.

He wakes up hurting- his joints, his stomach, his head. He remembers the guy that diagnosed him with that fucking trauma disorder that made him feel more like a fuck-up than he usually did explaining it to him.

_Somatisation is the way that stress and trauma manifest in physical pain in the body. Pain is your body’s way of telling you that something’s wrong, and when it can’t handle any more emotional hurt, it pops up in other ways to get your attention._

He doesn’t know how Hopper will react to hearing that he’s absent, the man leaves before he usually wakes up anyway.

The layered blankets on top of him make him feel safe, and he’s maybe too warm and sweating under their weight but he ignores it.

Maybe Hopper won’t answer the phone when the school inevitably calls him about Billy not showing up and he just won’t know about it.

It supposed to be a comforting thought but the possibility just leaves him feeling emptier in his chest.

He closes his eyes and drifts in a semi-conscious fog for seconds or hours; He’s not sure.

Eventually, the door opens. He doesn’t open his eyes. Tries harder to slip into sleep and is pulled further into a waking state by his own determination to achieve the opposite.

There's a weight on the bed next to him, and he opens his eyes resignedly.

The chief is still in his uniform, minus the gun usually holstered in his hip when he’s working, and he’s looking down at him, concerned.

’Not having an easy day, kiddo?’

He’s blinking back tears for a few seconds, and when he knows they aren’t going to fall, shakes his head slightly.

Hopper nods, quietly, and for some reason, he doesn’t seem pissed about Billy skipping school, and it’s one of the reasons he’s starting to trust the guy, inch by inch.

Tentatively, he reaches an arm out from under the cover, not grabbing for anything, but leaving it close to the man’s body. Hopper slowly, _really fucking slowly,_ sets his own hand on his bicep, not squeezing or putting any pressure on the limb, just reassuringly making contact with him.

‘My daughter died years ago, kid, and I still have days where getting up and facing the world is like walking out in front of a firing squad.’

He sucks in a breath at the confession.

He could tell him about the time Michael pulled him out of a rip current when he panicked in the water, and how he stayed with him for days afterward because the other boy had warned him about secondary drowning; _I didn’t pull you out of there just for you to die on your bedroom floor a day later, dickhead_.

He could tell him about how he had tried to scrub the phantom sensations of his friend’s mom’s fingers off his body when he was thirteen and how he still liked to think that he had lost his virginity to Michael, even though they never dated, because he had been so careful with him and held him afterward.

He doesn’t, though. 

Not all of it, at least, because Hopper doesn’t want to know that shit, _Billy doesn’t want to know it and he was there living it._

But he can tell him some of it.

‘My friend died.’

His voice is hoarse and quiet. The hand on his arm squeezes, just for a second, and it doesn’t feel threatening.

‘It’s like being in a fucking rip current, and it’s like, everyone can see you thrashing around and they’re all screaming at you to _calm down and swim parallel to the shore,_ but they’re not the ones being pulled back out to sea.’

It sounds oddly poetic when he says it aloud, but it’s written down in a journal under his bed and it’s the only way he’s been able to describe it.

‘He saved me from drowning when I was fourteen and I didn’t even _notice_ he was drowning and he used a hoodie…'

He can’t finish it.

Doesn’t care if he sounds like a pussy breaking off in the middle of a sentence. Closes his eyes and tries to will all of it away so he isn’t flooded with every detail of that night.

Hopper sits with him until he falls asleep. Coaxes him out of his room at some point and seems satisfied when he makes it from his bed to the couch and lets him curl up with a blanket and El.

He feels safe. Probably, tomorrow he’ll wake up embarrassed and ready to knock Tommy on his ass on the basketball court and definitely wag his English class and face the world again.

But for now, he’s grateful for the people around him, helping him weather each day as it comes.


End file.
